The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “Dad,” he said. “I thought you’d be home hours ago. Where’ve you been?”

  I hung up my coat and walked Clay back into the front room. We both sat on the couch and I switched off the television set.

  “You all right?” Clay said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. “Something about your face, I guess. It looks different somehow.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Just different,” Clay said. “Almost like the way someone looks after they finish running a marathon or after they finish a hard job.”

  “Well, then I guess that would be me,” I said. “I just came off work and in fact, I did finish a long job. And now I think I can relax and take it easy again.”

  “You wanna talk about it?” Clay said.

  “Sometime,” I said. “But not right now, all right?”

  “Sure,” Clay said. “You hungry?”

  I hadn’t even thought about food since I’d started this personal quest for justice and my stomach was rumbling.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I could use a little something. What do you have?”

  Clay shrugged. “Nothing, but I’ll go to the diner with you if you’d like some company.”

  I just wanted to collapse on the couch with my feet up, but I did have to eat after all. Clay and I drove the six blocks to the diner and slid into a booth near the window. He ordered only a plate of French fries and I got myself a nice, fat hamburger with the works and a cup of coffee. It would be hard to sleep on a full stomach, but even harder on an empty one, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

  I was in my office the next day by nine o’clock, reading the morning paper when my inner office door opened and Dan Hollister walked in. He didn’t bother with his usual salutation, but instead sat in my client’s chair and just looked at me.

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” I said. “What’s with the look?”

  “What look is that?” Dan said.

  “The one you’re giving me now,” I said. “You making any progress with those three muggers?”

  “You know, Matt,” Dan said. “It’s actually funny that you should bring that up.”

  “Why’s that?” I said.

  Dan sighed. “Because,” he said, “it just so happens that we have all three in custody. Well, actually two. The third one’s dead.”

  I laid the paper down and turned to Dan, giving him my full attention now. “Go on,” I said.

  “Strange thing happened,” Dan said. “Someone called the front desk and told Sergeant Adams where we could find one of our three killers and then hung up.”

  “That is strange,” I said. “What about the other two?”

  “The one I mentioned that’s dead,” Dan said. “He was killed on the job. Squashed by a pile of lumber falling off a forklift. What a mess.”

  “Say, that is good news,” I said. “And the third one?”

  “Now that’s the strangest one of the bunch,” Dan said. “The third guy’s name was Ernie Bowden. He was the one with the piece of pipe who…” Dan stopped, realizing that I didn’t need to hear any more details about Amy’s death. “The one who used the pipe.”

  “What about him?” I said. “You got him, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yeah,” Dan said. “Gave up without a struggle. Didn’t even need to slap the cuffs on him.”

  “Really?” I said, trying to keep a straight face throughout this whole conversation.

  “Really,” Dan said. “Someone got to him before we did and broke both of his arms and both of his legs. He was just lying in the street crying when we got there. Now don’t you find that strange?”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why?” Dan said. “I’ll tell you why. We spoke not long ago and I happened to mention to you that we knew the name of one of your three assailants and that we were closing in on him. I believe I asked you to sit this one out, if you remember.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And miraculously the same three guys we’re after are almost handed to us on a platter,” Dan said. “I find that very coincidental, don’t you?”

  “Not especially,” I said. “I’d call it a coincidence and let it go at that.”

  Dan stared at me for a moment and then added, “Matt, if I…”

  I interrupted with, “If you weren’t such a good friend. Is that what you were about to say?”

  Dan let out a deep breath and looked at his lap. When he looked back up he said, “Yes, I guess that’s exactly what I was about to say. Sometimes I guess the books just balance and I shouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. But off the record, Matt, you wouldn’t think of breaking the law and getting involved with one of our investigations now, would you?”

  “Not on your life, Dan,” I said. “Not on your life.”

  36 - One Bad Apple

  I had gone to the office that early October morning to go through my files and discard the ones that were more than seven years old. I just didn’t have the room to keep them all and by law I was only required to keep them for seven years. It was going to be a major job but I wasn’t presently on a case and it was something I’d been putting off for far too long.

  I started in the investigations business shortly after leaving the Los Angeles police force back in March of 1946, right after World War II ended. My former commander at the twelfth precinct, Sergeant Dan Hollister was still with the department after twenty-nine years. He was a captain now and his retirement was just three months away. We hadn’t been close friends after I’d left the force, but we’d learned to work together occasionally out of necessity. As we aged, however, we took the time to get to know each other better and eventually formed a friendship that has endured now for more than twenty-five years.

  I’d been asked by several of my friends when I thought I was going to hang up my gun for good and go fishing or camping or any of the other mindless activities people in their sixties did when they quit working. I usually tried to sidestep those kinds of questions. I wasn’t ready to give up the occupation that I enjoyed. It suited me and as far as I was concerned, I could die on this job, which I almost did on several occasions over the past three decades.

  As I scoured my old files, I set aside the ones that could finally be burned. I came across the file of my first case twenty-five years ago. It was dated August 10, 1946. I recognized a few names as I flipped pages in the folder. A Wisconsin woman whose daughter had run away to become an actress in Hollywood had hired me to find her. The daughter found out the hard way that Hollywood chews up and spits out aspiring starlets like bubble gum and was finally convinced to go home to a normal life, whatever normal was.

  My second case involved my dry cleaner, a Mr. Marcheske. I’d found his body slumped over my desk one evening and was led on a merry chase all around town. But the file that really brought back old memories was one that was dated 1947 and it involved my twenty-year high school class reunion. It was an especially hard case for me that involved several of my classmates getting killed as the reunion drew closer.

  By noon that day I had pulled two hundred eighty-nine cases from the more than four hundred fifty that I’d worked on since I’d started. I decided to take these to the dump myself and burn them. Most of the principles in these cases were dead already, but I still felt the need to destroy them completely.

  I bought myself a two-wheeled dolly and wheeled the four boxes of files down the hall to the elevator and out to the back seat of my car. If I stacked them just right, I could get the other four boxes in there and do this all in one trip. I wheeled the empty cart back upstairs and was loading the other four boxes onto it when my outer door opened. Soft-soled shoes squeaked their way to my inner door and I heard a rapping sound. The inner door opened and my son, Clay stepped inside.

  “Hey, old man,” he said. “Better let me help you with that.”

  “Clay,” I said, glad to see him again. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t y
ou be in school?”

  “Not today,” Clay said. “So what are you doing with those boxes?” He grabbed the last of the four boxes and stacked it onto the handcart and took the handles. “Where do you want these?”

  I pulled my keys out of my pocket and directed Clay toward the door. “Down to the car. Hey, as long as you’re off of school today, how’d you like to take a ride to the dump with me? I have to burn eight boxes of old files.”

  Clay was already several steps down the hall when he stopped in his tracks and I bumped into him. “What?” I said.

  “These are your old case files?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I only have to keep the past seven years worth and these eight boxes can finally go. You wanna help me or not?”

  “Dad,” Clay said, turning around and pushing the cart back toward my office. “I was thinking, if you didn’t want these anymore that maybe you’d let me hang onto them for you.”

  “Why?” I said. “These cases were all closed years ago, no, decades ago. What would you do with them?”

  “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clay said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Come on,” Clay said. “Open the door and let’s sit down.”

  I unlocked my office and opened the door while Clay pushed the cart back into my office. He set it down next to my filing cabinets and then walked over to the window to look down onto Hollywood Boulevard. I walked up next to him and laid my hand on his shoulder. I gestured toward my client’s chair and he sat. I took a seat behind my desk and waited for him to begin.

  “I told you I was off of school today,” Clay said.

  I nodded.

  “Well, actually I’m off for good,” he said. “I quit.” He took a deep breath and waited for my reaction.

  “You quit?” I said, surprised. “You haven’t even put in two years of college yet and now you want to quit? Why?”

  “Dad,” Clay said. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, believe me. This isn’t some impulsive act. I’ve been thinking about this for a few months now.”

  “You saying you don’t want to graduate and become a lawyer someday?” I said.

  “That’s just it,” Clay said. “Even after the four years of college, there’s still law school and studying for the bar exam and struggling with a practice, trying to establish myself. Christ, I’ll be an old man before I get to try a case in court.”

  “Old man?” I said. “Hell, you’re only twenty.”

  “Twenty-one,” Clay corrected me.

  “All right, twenty-one,” I conceded. “That’s just a drop in the bucket. You want to talk old, look at me. I just turned sixty last July. Now we’re talkin’ old here.”

  “You don’t look it,” Clay said. “Look at you. You could pass for forty-something easily.”

  “Thanks, but there’s still the matter of you dropping out of college,” I said. “If you don’t want to go into law, then what?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Clay said. “I was hoping to come into the private investigations business with you.”

  I started to open my mouth, but Clay jumped in again.

  “Don’t say no yet, just hear me out,” Clay said. “You’ve said yourself on a few occasions that you think you might be spreading yourself out too thin on some cases and that you could use another hand or a backup at times. Well…” He let the sentence hang there and just turned both palms inward toward himself. “Here I am, your extra set of legs and eyes and ears—your backup. Think about the sign on the outside of this building. You could change it to “Cooper And Son, Investigations.” Now doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?”

  I had to secretly admit that the thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion but I’d never brought it up to Clay before because I was sure he’d had his mind set on a career in law. Suddenly, now that he’d expressed his hopes out loud, I felt a pride swelling inside me and it felt right.

  Clay saw my expressionless face and I could see worry in his until my face morphed into a broad smile. It made him smile as well. I held out my hand and he shook it, wrapping his left hand over our shaking hands. I pulled him close and hugged him. When I released him we both let out breaths that we hadn’t realized we were holding.

  “That’s why I want to keep your old files,” Clay said. “What better textbook than your old files to learn from?”

  I gestured around my office with my palm up. “But I don’t have any more room to keep these here.”

  “Let me take them home,” Clay said. “I have plenty of room.”

  I pointed to the handcart with the remaining four boxes of files. “Go ahead, take ‘em downstairs and put ‘em in my car,” I said. “I’ll follow you home and help you unload them.”

  Clay grabbed the cart’s handles and pushed it toward my door again. I locked up behind him and drove the eight boxes to his house in Glendale just a few miles to the east. After we had them unloaded and stacked in one of his spare bedrooms, he told me to follow him into his basement. I descended the stairs and followed him into his workshop. The floor was littered with sawdust and scraps of wood. There was something tall under a tarp in the corner. He told me to stay where I was and he hurried to the corner and retrieved the object, tarp and all.

  “You ready for this?” Clay said.

  I nodded and he pulled the tarp off to reveal a wooden sign, perhaps five feet long and eighteen inches wide. It had been routed and stained and painted and mounted with eyehooks and a chain. Across the front it read, “Cooper And Son, Investigations.” Clay held it right side up and smiled broadly, waiting for my reaction.

  “So, you have been giving this some thought, haven’t you?” I said.

  “I finished this last week,” Clay said, setting the sign down.

  “Your mother would have been proud,” I said, wrapping my arms around Clay. I looked on a desk Clay had there in the basement at the opposite end of the room. He had a hinged picture frame with a photo of his mother, Amy, and me that was taken at least six years ago, shortly before three muggers ended Amy’s life. We certainly looked happy back then and I can’t help but wonder what would have been.

  Next to the picture frame sat a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. I pointed to it. “What have you got there?” I said.

  Clay stepped over to the machine, ready to demonstrate his latest gadget. “It’s called a Phone Mate, Model 400,” he said.

  “Yeah? What’s it do?” I asked.

  Clay pointed to a cord coming out of the back of the machine that attached to a desk phone sitting next to it. “Let’s say you’re out of the office but you still need to know who’s calling you while you’re gone,” he said. “Well, when your phone rings, this machine will turn itself on and the caller will hear your voice telling them to leave a name and number where you can call them back when you return. Then when they leave the message, the machine records it onto the tape reel and you can listen to it later. Pretty handy, eh?”

  “Sounds like a gimmick that won’t last a year,” I said. “Mark my words.”

  “Still,” Clay said, “when you and I are out on a case, won’t it be nice to know we won’t miss any more important calls?”

  “We’ll see,” I said, still skeptical of the machine’s capabilities. “But isn’t that what the phone service is for now? I just call the service and they read me any messages that were left. Same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Now you can skip those monthly charges,” Clay explained. “This thing’ll pay for itself in no time at all.”

  “Okay, you got me sold,” I said. “When did you plan on starting?”

  “About an hour ago,” Clay said.

  “Well, then what are we waiting for?” I said. “I’m not paying you to stand around here.”

  Clay wasted no time in installing his phone gadget on my office phone. For the next few days Clay stayed with me, learning my methods and tricks and meeting my contacts at the precinct. Some of them had known
Clay since he was born, but it was still good to let them know that Cooper Investigations was now a two-man team.

  I brought him to Captain Hollister’s office and knocked. Hollister’s secretary, Hannah, buzzed him on the intercom and announced our arrival. She told us to go on in. Hannah had been with Dan since he’d been a sergeant all those years ago and she was creeping up on retirement herself.

  Dan Hollister stood when we entered, came around his desk and extended his hand to me.

  I shook it and then gestured toward Clay. “You remember Clay, don’t you?” I said.

  Hollister shook Clay’s hand and looked him over. “The Clay I remember was just a kid,” Dan said. “This can’t be him.”

  Clay smiled. “Nice to meet you again, Captain,” he said.

  Hollister released Clay’s hand and held his at the three-foot level. “Last time I saw you, you were this tall, just a little thing,” he said, looking at the top of Clay’s head. “What are you now, six one, six two?”

  “Six two,” Clay said.

  “I’ll bet you have to beat the girls off with a stick,” Dan said. “You got a steady?”

  Clay shook his head. “No one in particular,” he said.

  “Ah, playing the field,” Dan said. Wise move.”

  Clay blushed.

  I looked at Dan and said, “Speaking of growth spurts, how’s Dean doing? Still in college?”

  “Still in college,” Dan said. “Still studying law but doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He sees what I do and wants the same thing. I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind is set and who am I to argue?”

  “A chip off the old block, eh?” I said.

  Hollister turned back to me. “So, Matt, what brings you two down here?” he said, pointing to a sofa against one of the walls. We sat and Dan pulled a chair up across from us.

  “Hold on, Dan,” I said. “First things first. “What’s this I hear about you hanging up your spurs?”

  “First of the year,” Dan said. “Two months, three weeks, four days and…” He looked at his watch. “Six hours, but who’s counting?”